Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Doom and the Dark Side of Cosmic Fecundity

The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, supreme Hindu god of destruction and creation

Like many in the blogosphere, I have expended considerable mental energy in recent years studying and fretting over the various "doomer" scenarios that threaten humanity in the 21st century. There was a time when I found the apparent facts utterly depressing and was convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel for mankind – that the future offered nothing but total collapse and devolution. But some time during the past six months or so, and particularly with my recent turn to the “dark side”, I have come to view the doomer issues quite differently. Since making the Dark Energy my ally, I no longer dread the Apocalypse, but see in it a deep truth and a powerful avatar of progress. As strange as it may sound, I now welcome peak oil, climate change, ecological disruptions, natural and man-made disasters and all the strife and struggle that they imply.

How can I make such a callous statement? The answer should be obvious to any objective thinker: through strife and struggle life evolves and man achieves progress and greatness. Civilization was born out of the hardships that followed the last ice age; the Classical Age arose from the ashes of the Bronze Age Collapse; the European Renaissance followed the disastrous 14th century; the conquest of the New World made possible the wealthiest and most progressive empire yet seen; world-transforming technologies like computers, nuclear energy and jet airplanes emerged from the cauldron of the last World War; the moon shot grew out of the power struggle known as the Cold War. And now, after decades of relative stagnation, the wheel is set to turn again. So while I don’t dispute the reality of the doomer prognostications, I don’t dread this doom, but welcome it as the birth pangs of a new age.

This is a perspective that anyone conditioned by the "progressive" Judeo-Christian values of Western civilization will have a very hard time coming to grips with. It truly is a worldview that is "beyond good and evil" in the traditional sense, one which I suspect is, at least in elite circles, becoming the conventional wisdom. My sense is that the wealthy and powerful enjoy their status for good reason: they understand the dark nature of this world better than most, and use that knowledge to their advantage. I also suspect that these elites know better than most that doom is coming, and are making preparations to exploit it as we speak. The doom that we face, the potential culling of populations and collapse of civilizations, is to the illuminated just another manifestation of Howard Bloom’s “Lucifer Principle,” of the sort that has driven human progress from the beginning:

"The nature scientists uncover has crafted our viler impulses into us: in fact, these impulses are a part of the process she uses to create. Lucifer is the dark side of cosmic fecundity, the cutting blade of the sculptor's knife. Nature does not abhor evil; she embraces it. With it she moved the human world to greater heights of organization, intricacy, and power." –Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle

So I suspect the conspiracy theories have more than a grain of truth, and there really is a Luciferian elite drawing up plans for a New World Order and/or a Satanic Singularity at this very moment. And I expect they will succeed.

Another expression of this principle can be found in Hinduism, that most ancient and wise of all religious traditions. For the Hindus understand the cyclical nature of all things, and worship a deity who embodies the eternal cycles of destruction and creation: Shiva, whose cosmic dance of Tandava has apparently begun again.

The two most common forms of Shiva's dance are the Lasya (the gentle form of dance), associated with the creation of the world, and the Tandava (the violent and dangerous dance), associated with the destruction of weary worldviews – weary perspectives & lifestyles. In essence, the Lasya and the Tandava are just two aspects of Shiva's nature; for he destroys in order to create, tearing down to build again.

Whatever the nature of this approaching Eschaton, I choose to see it as the darkness before a new dawn. I choose to believe that apocalypse is the necessary evil that will tear down our weary worldviews, end the Judeo-Christian Aeon and make way for an Aeon of Nietzschean, cosmic civilization. So when you hear a garden-variety doomer wringing his hands about all the cataclysms about to befall a greedy, evil and selfish mankind, just smile and say to this simplistic soul, still stuck spiritually in the old Aeon: "Yes, of course mankind is greedy, evil and selfish, and of course the cataclysms are coming. And I wouldn’t have it any other way."

"Without strife, your victory has no meaning.
Without strife, you do not advance.
Without strife, there is only stagnation."
–Sith Master Uthar Wynn

"Only this have I learned so far, that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him – that whatever is most evil is his best power and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better and more evil." –Friedrich Nietzsche

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." –Harry Lime, The Third Man

8 comments:

Are you insane or just incredibly stupid? There will be no cosmic civilization. There is no fuel or energy to power it. And at the end of the day it is only mindless expansionism and colonization. Wake up turd.

I guess I'd like to see it as the darkness before a new dawn too, but it's a little difficult because my children are liable to be snuffed out in the process. Do you have any? If I didn't, I might be equally sanguine.

Actually, there is *plenty* of fuel. Nuclear energy alone can power a civilization more advanced than ours for many millions of years. We are nowhere near our limits to growth on this planet, and of course outer space is unlimited. We will expand mindlessly, because that is the nature of life. You can choose suicide, but most will not. I suggest that you wake up, because the Malthusians have been wrong for hundreds of years. The world is ours for the taking and the shaping in accordance with our wills. That is the hubris of our species, and thank the cosmic void for it or we would have died out long ago.

It won't be smooth sailing though; I expect great strife, wars and perhaps a Singularity or evolutionary bifurcation in the not too distant future. Apocalypses are a normal part of life on this planet. The trick is to decondition yourself from the white light delusions of Judeo-Christianity and to realize that the world has its own dark agenda. I encourage everyone to embrace the :dark side", read Nietzsche, the Lucifer Principle and other “Satanic” thinkers, because they will make you stronger, smarter, less afraid and much better prepared for an uncertain future in a world that has a way of realizing our worst fears.

Strange, fuck yourself, you have no goddamn right to "take" any fucking world or bend it to your insane will. It is not the nature of life to just mindlessly grow, and most living things reach things called boundaries. You can't eat nuclear power, nor can you drink it, or fertilize crops with it. You can however die from radiation poisoning and kill all manner of other organisms with it too. Please wake the fuck up and stop being a mindless ignoramus.

Actually, in a godless, unlimited universe I have the right to do anything I please. There may be boundaries to life, but we're nowhere near them. It sounds like you're suffering from some kind of religious thinking, because there really is no rational reason to be so pessimistic. I've studied the doomer arguments for a long time, and they don't hold up very well under scrutiny. I think the main problem is that humans evolved in a very different environment than technological civilization, and zero-sum thinking is inherent in us. When zero-sum thinking gets out of hand, we have insane wars and genocides, and I expect that to continue until we find a way to technologically transform ourselves into a different species. It seems to me that the stresses and technologies of the 21st century may offer the right combination of factors to produce such a transhuman speciation event. Again, this is the Lucifer Principle in action.